Crush The Game.com

I Quit Playing Online Poker To Do What?!?

That’s right. After 2 years of being a professional online poker player, I’ve thrown in the towel. To be a songwriter. Wait, what? Check it out:

Now perhaps this is just a phase… I mean we never really quit poker. As Tommy Angelo said in the foreword of his book, The Elements of Poker, “…I accidentally became a full-time professional musician for eight years. My relationship with Poker stayed strong, even though I continued to split my affections. In my life, I have obsessed for years each at scrabble, and chess, and backgammon, and gin, and through it all, there was Poker, always Poker, ready to take me back.”

So I’m sure I’ll be back. But right now I’ve got a sick obsession with making music and writing songs. And I can’t tell you how many lyrics I’ve written that have double meanings reflecting poker… e.g. “if you keep from going broke, you’ll never make any money” or “every hand, every moment, every chance you get…”

To those that wish me well on this adventure, you have my thanks. I’m sure many of the regs at 100NL on Full Tilt will be glad to see me gone! My project, The Dead Languages, is presently taking pre-orders and raising funding on Kickstarter.com.

Don’t worry about this site, though. I will still be selling and supporting my Poker Software Tools: The Destroyer HUD, The Crusher HUD, and the Flop Defense Notes. I will also still be coaching. And I will check the forum at least once a day in order to continue serving the needs of my customers.

I’ve obsessed about Poker for what seems like a very long time. I’ve seen around 1.3 million hands. Now I’m going to hang it up for a while to write pretty songs.

EDIT: There’s a pretty fantastic article written about this by the Las Vegas Weekly: http://www.lasvegasweekly.com/news/2011/may/11/high-tech-savvy/

Tags: hold 'em, Macro-level, online poker, Poker, quit

NoteCaddy

The new HUD is very near completion; and in fact, it would have been done already except I recently found an awesome new poker toy called: NoteCaddy.

NoteCaddy is an automatic note generator that puts notes on your opponents based on definitions you create. For a guy who likes to program formulas, statistics, definitions etc. NoteCaddy is a dream. I’ve programmed several hundred note definitions and have been testing them out at the tables. NoteCaddy biggest strength is in “noting” postflop hand ranges. If I want to know what hand range an opponent’s check/raise on the flop signifies, I look at my notes and it’s most likely there.

Poker Tracker 3 has the capability to do what NoteCaddy does. But at this time, postflop hand strength stats are buggy for PT3. (Now before HEM users say, “Ha!” let me remind them that HEM has no such capabilities whatsoever.) So NoteCaddy is an easy-to-use add-on to PT3 (and HEM) as well as NoteCaddy. It is efficient and effective. And using my custom definitions, it has allowed me to pull some sick moves at the tables.

Which brings me to this point: NoteCaddy is best used with custom definitions. That means it is a hands-on program that may require you to mess around and input things to get what you want out of it. For example, I’ve spent the time and effort and created 640 Custom Note Definitions to assist in identifying postflop hand ranges. Make these requests in this forum!

Tags: definitions, General, hold 'em, no limit, NoteCaddy, notes, Poker, Poker Tracker, PT3, statistics

A New HUD Update Is Coming… Seriously

1. A new HUD is coming.
2. It has been delayed while the developer at PT3 is working on improving the HUD’s performance in PT3. (It’s THAT powerful.)
3. It will be $90.
4. The old HUD will still be available for $45.
5. Anyone who buys (or has bought) the old HUD before the new HUD is released will get a free upgrade to the new HUD if they wish, providing they’re willing to give a testimonial. (I’ve contacted a few people about this via email. If I haven’t contacted you and you’d like to participate: send an email to “support [at] crushthegame [dot] com”.)

Tags: General, no limit, Poker, Poker Tracker, PT3, statistics

A Non-Poker Topic: Effective Value

The principle of Effective Value (FV) is this: a product’s worth is determined by the length of time using or deriving use from the product, and/or the amount of time spent gaining benefits derived from using the product.

Each unit of time is worth an amount of money. For simplicity’s sake, the lowest unit of time is 1 hour and it is worth $1.

Effective Value can be labeled as FV for short; as in e’F'fective ‘V’alue, so as not to be confused with EV (expected value – now common nomenclature in risk-taking communities).

A friend of mine bought a bag of candy. We were prowling around the town, hopping from bar to bar and he had the urge to buy a bag of “Red Dollars” from the convenience store. He bought the candy and enjoyed it. I, for the life of me, could not understand this purchase. It seemed so ineffective! I thought my money was much better spent on a cheap beer at the bar. But looking at these two purchases (his Red Dollars and my cheap beer) through the lens of Effective Value, I then saw that his purchase was ultimately more effective than mine. › Continue reading

Tags: discipline, General

Poker and God: Jesus Boosts My Winrate

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline. – Proverbs 1:7

As I gamble for my living wages, I have often been asked how I reconcile my profession with my Christian faith. I want to write this out so all know where I am coming from on the subject. I’m not going to debate if playing online poker is sinful. To some folks it will be and to others it won’t be. Honestly, many of the Christians who will talk about what is and isn’t sinful forget that everything we do is sinful. We do not live a split second without “living in sin.” › Continue reading

Tags: discipline, General, God, hold 'em, is gambling a sin, no limit, Poker

Online Poker vs. Live Poker

The teaching on this site refers to online play, but is 100% applicable live. The emphasis is on online play because for all poker players, but especially aspiring students of the game, online play is the proving ground. The players are indisputably better, and attempting to beat them will make you better. You can see 8 to 24 times the amount of hands you can see live – thereby giving you many years worth of experience in far less time. And situations are far more concrete. Meaning, your bias cannot influence statistics staring at you right on the screen. (I played for two hours with a friend – a good friend but poor poker player – at the poker table at the Four Winds Casino who claimed another player was raising “every hand.” The truth is, this player had raised 3 hands in 2 hours. My friend disputed this point, claiming this rather passive player was a “maniac” and a “donkey”. But there is no disputing a PokerTracker statistic.) › Continue reading

Tags: discipline, General, no limit, probability

What is Important in No Limit Hold ‘Em?

Ask your average no limit player what things are important to think about while playing the game and you might hear some things like:  your cards, what cards you think your opponent has, the texture of the flop, the amount of money in the pot, what size a bet should be, whether or not you should bluff, etc.  But the truth is, there is a quantifiable list of priorities in this game.  In fact every game (poker or otherwise) has a different list of priorities you should be mentally assessing at each opportunity of action.  A no limit hold ‘em cash game’s first list of priorities – the things you are thinking about as the cards are “in the air” being dealt – is this:

1.The effective stack
2.Your relative position
3.Your absolute position
4.Your opponents’ ranges
5.Your table image
6.The intention of the players yet to act
7.Your cards

› Continue reading

Tags: Effective Stack, General

Introduction

Welcome to CrushTheGame.com.  I’ve created this site because I love the game of poker and I want to see its survival and evolution.  The goal of this site is to teach as many who want to learn how to survive, beat, and eventually crush the game – offering free, searchable, high-quality poker advice that stands above any existing poker-talk website.  In the early articles of this site, I will be discussing primarily no limit hold ‘em cash games (except where otherwise noted) due to the games’ immense popularity.  I am also affiliated with Full Tilt Poker, and will feature advice from their stable of professionals from time to time (although if the advice is ever misguided, I’ll add my 2 cents).

› Continue reading

Tags: discipline, General, hold 'em, Macro-level, no limit